Scribd Miss Saigon

Willa Murphy October 20, 2013 Drama Red Group Miss Saigon Play Review Miss Saigon, an emotional and touching play that tells the heartbreaking tale of Kim, a seventeen year old Vietnamese woman forced to dance in a sleazy club in order to provide for herself and flee a dreadful arranged marriage, investigates the sacrifices made to take care of loved ones and promises left unfulfilled. The play begins as Kim starts her first day at the club under the leadership of the “Engineer,” and meets Chris, a U.S. Marine who falls in love with Kim and promises to bring her to America. The play progresses three years and the audience finds Chris couldn’t fulfill his promise and Kim is forced to kill her arranged fiancée, who threatens to take Chis’ and her child, Tam. In the second act, Chris and his new wife travel to Bangkok, the new home of Kim, to meet his son, and the audience sees how desperately Kim clings to the old innocent love that she yearns so much to regain. When she learns that Chris is married and does not want to take her to America, she offers up her son instead, pleading that Chris will at least take him. In the last moments of the play, Kim goes into her room and shoots herself, dying in the arms of the only man she loved. The theme of Miss Saigon echoes those of Broadway shows Les Misérables and samples of theme from Chess. It portrays the innocence of Kim, who becomes hardened as her young purity is corrupted by the hardships of Vietnam. The play also focuses on Kim’s idealist view of escape from her hopelessness and her reluctance to let go of her dreams, a hope that is made larger by the arrival of Chris. In the final minutes of the play, Kim is forced to let go of her metaphorical lifeline and loses hope of a better life, letting herself die with her expectations. The Signature Theatre’s rendition of Miss Saigon was faithful to the original Broadway cast while putting its own twist on the story, adding in the song “Maybe” to display the voice of Erin Driscoll, who plays Ellen, Chris’ wife. She carries the number with a fierce boldness that

shows the character’s own expectations for Chris. Tom Sesma, who portrayed the “Engineer,” a cheating, scheming character who looks to America for new opportunities to swindle customers, does the character justice. He carries himself in a hysterically regal way, as if he is trying to convince both the cast and audience that he is deserving of their trust and money, and maintains a squeaky voice that implies deceit. The Engineer’s famous song, “If You Want to Die in Bed,” is sung with a proper amount of sleaziness and “The American Dream” is carried with so much desperate hope that the audience feels pity for the manipulative man. Diana Huey, who plays Kim, uses her soothing singing voice to display the innocence of her character, while her partner, Gannon O’Brien, is not as successful in convincing the audience of his character’s depth and weaknesses.